Chaimite’s conquests in Jorge do Canto’s cinematographic work and in Mia Couto’s literature

Abstract

Joaquim Augusto Mouzinho de Albuquerque was a Portuguese lieutenant colonel who led the attack on the last African emperor in the southern region of Mozambique: Ngungunyane, in the village of Chaimite. This feat brought him much glory and prestige in Portugal, at the end of the 19th century, and he was appointed Governor-General of Mozambique in 1896. The Ngungunyane’s capture, then, was used as propaganda by the Portuguese Estado Novo regime, becoming a memory’s rescue strategy and the use of History as a political and ideological systematization project, as well as an emblematic moment. This propagandistic use took place through the film production Chaimite: the Fall of the Vátua Empire (1953), directed by the Portuguese filmmaker Jorge Brum do Canto. As a literary character, in the book The Sword and the Spear (2016), by writer Mia Couto, Mouzinhos’s representation differs compared to that in Portuguese history. Thus, the objective of this work was to compare the narratives of this event from both perspectives: cinematographic and literary. If the purpose of the feature film was to construct a hero from History, in Couto's narrative, different impressions are made regarding this lieutenant colonel, sometimes seen as a savior of the country, sometimes seen as yet another superb Portuguese on African soil.